Official arrested for causing loss to NMMC

The Thane unit of the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) booked suspended deputy municipal commissioner (property tax and assessor and collector) of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), Prakash Kulkarni, and two others on Wednesday for allegedly tampering with the computer-generated tax system which caused a Rs 681.65-crore loss to the civic body.

NMMC chief Tukaram Mundhe had suspended Kulkarni on charges of administrative irregularities in May 2016. In September 2017, he transferred the case to the ACB for an open inquiry after he had found that the computer-generated tax system had been tampered with. The other two officials who were also allegedly involved in irregularities are NMMC’s accountant Dinesh Gawari and computer operator Kishore Dhole. They were suspended.

“Kulkarni had been part of NMMC’s property tax department for 20 years and was responsible for generating and distributing property tax amounting to 3.07 lakh properties under NMMC’s jurisdiction every six months. He (Kulkarni), along with Gawri and Dhole, reportedly tampered with the computer system in such a way that it did not print the bills and ensured that names of the property holders do not appear in the defaulter’s list,” the officer alleged.